About once a year, I seem to latch onto one of my favourite eighties or nineties songs. They suddenly show up with a deep new meaning and a message for me, right at the time I need to hear it. In my youth these songs just brought pleasure and escape, at least at a conscious level. I remember driving down the highway on a warm summer night in Toronto blasting music and singing along to them with friends. Man, I feel so free and light just thinking about those experiences now.

I have a confession. It is a small one that turns out to be large. I have been saying “Be present.” “Be in the present moment.” “Be here now.” I have said it to clients, to friends, to myself. It rolls off the tongue — and of course it does, because everyone says it. The airport-bookstore mystics say it. The meditation apps say it. It has become the common currency of anyone who wants to sound awake. And I am only now noticing how unconscious I have been every single time the

“They say love saves, but it is love that teaches man how deeply he can bleed without dying.” – Marcus Aurelius What is Love? (Baby Don’t Hurt Me, No More) Love is the energy that kept my heart beating when my blood stopped flowing. By all accounts, I was dead — at least spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. Sure, my body was still alive, but that was just a matter of time. The body can’t survive without the head. I had lost everything that had ever mattered to me, and I co